Monday, August 25, 2014

Qué lástima, Caracas

Caracas is only one of four cities in the world, and the only one in
the Americas, to have experienced an abysmal decline in its quality of
life over the past five years. The only cities that have experienced
worse drops in “livability” are those mired in armed conflict: Kiev,
Ukraine; Tripoli, Libya; and Damascus, Syria.

This is according to information provided by the Intelligence Unit of the Economist in their latest Global Liveability Ranking and Report
published in August. The study evaluated 30 factors related
to stability, health, education, infrastructure, culture, and
environment in 140 cities around the world.

The capital of Venezuela, which ranked 126 of 140, is the only city
in the Americas to have experienced such a drastic decline across the
relevant indicators since 2009.

Well, can it be blamed on the locals?

“In other cities, many of these powers are in the hands of local
government, but in Caracas, they have been centralized. Here, the
transportation system (Metro and Metrobús) reports to the Minister of
Transportation, electricity is in the hands of the Minister of Electric
Energy, hospitals and schools are not in the hands of local government,
because they have taken those powers away. The people are able to
identify that the national government is responsible for many of these
issues,” says [Fredery] Calderón [president of For a Possible Caracas].

In addition, the ruling party has used the power of the central
government to create a parallel authority in the municipalities where
they have lost local mayoral elections.

In 2009, Chavistas created the Capital District Government, an
administrative body led by the “head of government,” an unelected
presidential appointee. This new appointee was granted the powers
previously held by the city’s mayor, opposition leader Antonio Ledezma,
in the municipality of Libertador, the only municipality within the
district where the opposition has not won an election in recent years.

Following the most recent mayoral and gubernatorial elections, in which
Ledezma won reelection against his Chavista opponent Ernesto Villegas,
the central government repeated
this same tactic and created the Ministry of Popular Power for the
Revolutionary Transformation of the Great Caracas. Villegas was placed
in charge of the new ministry and tasked with the duties and authority
that the local electorate had previously denied him.